Fine Art Street Photography by Rupert Vandervell

I’ve been a subscriber to Rupert Vandervell‘s channel: New Ways of Seeing for quite some time and have enjoyed it greatly. I like his delivery, and I like his videos, which are relatively short and not overproduced.

So, when I bumped into his book “Fine Art Street Photography” I decided to get hold of a copy.

How did I like it?

I’d like to start with a few small comments and one rather large criticism.

First the comments:

  1. I don’t care for this use of the words “fine art” in the title. I’ve noted this before (See: Fine Art Photography) so I won’t go into it again here. If you’re interested, please read the post.
  2. The title suggests that this type of high contrast image is the only type of street photography that deserves the name “Fine Art”. I doubt that Joel Meyrowitz, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston (to name but a few) would agree with this. In fact, the book is largely concerned with the type of street photography that Mr. Vandervell favors. In his introduction he is quite up front about this. Just don’t think that this is going to be a broad overview of the various types of fine art photography because it isn’t
  3. A better title might be “Fine Art Street Photography – my way”. Seen that way it’s an interesting book sprinkled with useful insights and interesting anecdotes. Mr. Vandervell writes well and it’s an easy read.
  4. If you’re looking for a “how to” book this is not it. But then Mr. Vandervell at no point claims that it is.

And now for the criticism:

As reviewers have pointed out the quality of reproduction of the images is truly terrible. If you watch any of his videos you will see that they are very contrasty with very dark blacks and very bright whites. In the book they’re all a very mushy grey. This is a pity because his images rely a lot on high contrast and in this book, you don’t get it. On top of this many of the photographs have faint lines (from scanning? from printing?) running through them. I’d suggest avoiding the book and instead taking a look at his YouTube channel. The photographs look much better, and it costs less. The images in this book simply do not do justice to Mr. Vandervell’s work.

For a broader overview of different types of street photography, I’d suggest taking a look at “The Street Photographers Manual” by David Gibson with a Foreword by Matt Stuart.

A Walk through Peekskill – Ice Cream

As I mentioned earlier it was a very hot and humid day. As I left Ramenesque I noticed this group of people eating ice cream. A wonderful opportunity for a bit of street photography, I thought. Pity the guy on the far left was not a foot or two away from the rest. I could perhaps have waited to see if he would move, but I had to get to my train and I was a little concerned that they might notice me.

Taken with a Sony RX10 IV

Where did he go?

This was taken on Third Avenue around 51st Street. I saw two elderly people approaching: a man using a walker and a woman. The woman stopped for some reason, (maybe to look in a store window?) and without her noticing the man continued on down Third Avenue. After a while she looked up again from whatever she was doing and noticed that he was nowhere in sight. Here she’s looking directly into the sun down Third Avenue to see if she could see him. For a guy with a walker he certainly moved very quickly. While I don’t know how this story ended, I imagine she found him eventually. I didn’t stick around to find out.

Taken with a Sony A6000 and Sony FE 24mm f2.8 G.